Friday, 8 January 2016

The Best and Worst First Watches of 2015 Part 3

The Best First Watches of 2015 Part 2

From http://8.media.tumblr.com/PrbyDnKQQl9eg15qsE80tuXGo1_500.jpg

19. Heart of Glass (Dir. Werner Herzog, 1976)

Qualifying as the strangest
viewing experience of the last year, from a director already know for
unorthodox film making tactics and subjects, Werner Herzog had everyone but background
extras and the central actor, playing the isolated and ostracised man in a community,
hypnotised before going on camera, this period drama about a red ruby glass
formula being lost turning into a disorientating and unnervingly odd
experience, the outsider literally the sane one when everyone else acts
erratically on-screen. Pretty much becoming one of the most memorable Herzog
films I've seen, despite its minor status in context of his filmography, Heart of Glass really does deserver the
term "one-off"

From https://lh3.ggpht.com/--nChVR-35nA/Ub1ypKVUrqI/AAAAAAAATFM/zY9cSgmtyYs/s1600/Jakubisko-Birds.Orphans.and.Fools.1969.avi_snapshot_00.50.58_%5B2013.06.16_01.08.43%5D.jpg

18. Birds, Orphans and Fools (Dir. Juraj Jakubisko, 1969)

The DVD company Second Run is going to appear on this
list again and with the intention of catching up with all their releases since
they first started in 2005 this year, this company which is only about to
release their first Blu-Ray release soon has yet been loved over ten years for
their championing of great, unseen cinema in the British sales. Eastern
European cinema in particular has been one of their best wheelhouses especially
when it comes to Czechoslovakia, but this is the first case in their catalogue
where the "Slovakia" of the former country, before it split into
Slovakia and the Czeck Republic after the Cold War ended, is emphasised through
one of the most acclaimed Slovakian directors
in existence. Czechoslovakian cinema is one of the most spectacular to have
existed for me, every film I've encountered including the popular sci-fi romps
magnificently inventive and cinematic, but Birds, Orphans and Fools is so dense
it's impossible to try and describe it in this small review. The visually
elaborate and richly told tale of two men and the beautiful young woman they
meet, culminating after so much joy into tragedy, is such a delirious
experience to sit through.

From http://366weirdmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/institute_benjamenta.jpg

17. Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (Dirs.
Stephen and Timothy Quay, 1995)

Speaking of a film difficult to
describe, the Quay Brother's first
feature film after a decade or more of short film work is just as unique as the
last two entries on this list, depicting a school for butlers and throwing the
viewer into a very elusive work in terms of tone, sweltering in mood rather
than an elaborate plot, and pretty much bringing the aesthetic style of the Quay's to a feature length film without
any failings. It was a nice coincidence to have watch this as in 2015 as Christopher Nolan, in an incredible surprise,
decided to take advantage of being a box office messiah to make a short documentary
on the twin animator-filmmakers, also leading to restorations for some of their
shorts which would be toured around the US with the documentary. This,
alongside a few other factors, has lead to soften my thoughts on Nolan for the positive, this act of his
one anyone could admire him for and like him immensely, and if his decision
turns out to have been success, more people who usually watch films like The Dark Knight (2008) are going to
stumble onto something as atmospheric and unconventional as Institute Benjamenta.

From https://estreetfilmsociety.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/black_girl_sembene_1966_esp-avi_snapshot_55-16_2010-10-31_10-38-22.jpg

16. Black Girl (Dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966)

Another of the great 2015 home
media releases of the year, though I'm weary of the BFI, who released it, making it a Limited Edition only. If a DVD
only release is down the line, this is not an issue, but considering that in
only sixty minutes or so Black Girl
is such an angry, to-the-point drama about post-colonial racism and the
frustration of an African woman who goes against the job she is tricked into,
it needs to be a film that's kept in public availability in the future even through
a budget release. Sembene is a
director whose films really need to be more easily available, not only for the
clear talent he had but for films of his I've actually seen like Xala (1975) to be accessible and those
I haven't seen to be at hand's reach.

From http://www.fantasticinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/zeder-1983.jpg

15. Zeder (Dir. Pupi Avati, 1983)

Probably one of the most powerful
images from all the films I saw last year was that of a man in a room as a television
screen starts playing, a live camera showing the close-up of a horrible being
who shouldn't be alive cackling at the man's expense. Zeder is amongst the most obscure on this list especially as it
hasn't even had a mere DVD release in the UK, a very original take on the
zombie genre which, through a conspiracy of a resurrection technique, shouldn't
be spoilt and enjoyed on the first watch blind to all that takes place.
Particularly when the eighties, while fun, were starting to lead to the goofier
Italian genre films and eventually take a nosedive in the nineties, the macabre
almost Lovecraftian story of Zeder stands out more. Enforcing the strong year
it was for discovering sadly obscurer horror films that should be more well
known, Zeder's director is more well
known the giallo The House With Laughing
Windows (1976), which will certainly be a subject of interest for me in 2016.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_y1USaJemzSs/TEdzUHFwotI/AAAAAAAADnY/JjB1EL0-WDI/s1600/tale+of+the+fox+2.png

14. The Tale of the Fox (Dirs. Irene
Starewicz and Wladyslaw Starewicz, 1930)

Another film sadly unavailable on
DVD, one of the most beautifully put together animated films of its era, an
elaborate stop motion feast which is gorgeous to view especially in lieu of how
painstaking it must've been to make. It also happens to be one of the most
misanthropic I've ever seen and from an age long before Pixar, the titular tale of a fox whose villainy and ability to
deceive every other animal in a fantasy kingdom actually makes him a heroic
protagonist compared to the stupidity of everyone else, something even more
alien and black hearted in context of the political correctness of today and
the desire to tell everyone that they're all special. Like celebrating a
character like Arsene Lupin, a
gentleman chad, the fox's series of tricks and deceits before even a war is
called out against his castle in the ending is so magnificently dark in a
gleeful way that it appealed to my blackened heart as much for story as it did
for its visually splendour.

From https://kiaikick.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/grandmaster3.jpg

13. The Grandmaster (Dir. War Wai Wong, 2013)

Released in 2014 in the UK, The Grandmaster is a very underrated
film. Viewed in the shorter international cut, which fragments parts of its
tale further, it's easy to see how it might've frustrated people. The
expectations surrounding the film as it took years to be made as well,
including how lead actor Tony Leung Chiu
Wai broke his arm during the production, made the anticipation too high,
which is more than likely why the film appeared at the cinema in the US and the
UK and seemed to have disappeared with little critical praise. For me it was
everything I was hoping for, less a martial arts film but a Wong Kar-Wai drama which was about
martial artists. Ashes of Time Redux
(1994/2006) informed me what a martial arts film from him would be like,
still with exhilarating fight scenes but more concerned with the characters'
emotions in a series of almost dreamlike sequences, effectively continuing with
his trademarks and pushing them further and further along, not appealing to
many people but still some of the most exquisite and best filmmaking possible. Far
from the damp mark it may have been for others, this was what I was hoping for
from Kar-Wai; having seen how much Tsui Hawk was compromised with Detective Dee and the Mystery of the
Phantom Flame (2010) into making a bland and palatable blockbuster, The
Grandmaster which was Kar-Wai's first
mainland Chinese and Hong Kong co-production is the complete opposite, an art
film I can only hope can be released one day in the West in its original length
cut.

From http://sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/The-Passenger-e1423266576566.jpg

12. The Passenger (Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)

Probably the best part of this
film's legacy, as an example of a Hollywood actor working with a European auteur
when Antonioni made a couple of
English language films, is knowing Jack
Nicolson holds this role of his and the film in general with such incredible
regard, a film that even in its artistic and methodical style is still an
effective character study which interlaces traces of the crime genre, about a
man who poses as another, but is still the artistic masterpiece in tone and
especially for aspects like the legendary and lengthy one-shot camera track at
the end. A film like The Passenger
shows how bold films can be and not at the expense of a magic to them,
particularly as I'll agree with Nicolson and say it's one of his best roles in
his entire career.

Possibly one of the most exciting
releases considering how Arrow, the
DVD distributor behind its 2015 release in the UK and USA, broke their backs to
get it in the first place and at the best quality. Thanks to the beautiful
retrospective releases (and critical appraisal) of his first five films and
most of his short films, all restored through public crowd funding, the rights
to Walerian Borowczyk's take on the Dr. Jekyll story, for decades stuck in
limbo, were finally relinquished; going through the same extensive restoration
the result is the perfect way for any film to get its first DVD and Blu-Ray
release in any form. That the film, which could be seen as a minor erotic
horror film on the surface, actually turns out to be such a gracefully dark
work that's sumptuous to look at and still transgressive in the current day is
a celebration, as the worst thing could've been that the hard work was all for
naught but a minor movie. Instead you have a film that has Patrick Magee, Udo Kier, Howard Vernon and the stunning Marina Pierro stuck in a Victorian
period costume drama that becomes a series of taboos being broken and the
original story's premise being turned upside-down at the end. Able to
appreciate Bernard Parmegiani's score,
Borowczyk's own production design and
the cinematography by Noël Véry in
full, gloriously restored detail, it's a piece of art which happens to also be
about a man who kills people with a giant scimitar-like penis amongst his many
other perversions, the restoration quality adding to the kind of melding of art
and perversity that I sadly don't get today rather than before I was born.

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"I could go on for hours with more examples. The list is endless. You probably never gave it a thought, but all great films, without exception, contain an important element of no reason. And you know why? Because life itself is filled with no reason." - Rubber (2010)

About Me

I am 28 years old and hail from England. For the last few years I have been a growing fan of cinema and have decided to take the next step into blogging about it and any other tangents that about the things I'm interested in I get onto.